This is a picture my mom drew as soon as my second daughter passed away.

My mom said my second daughter looked like a shaveling in the drawing. So she continued to draw a shaveling.

On her pictures my daughters are doing what they were in reality unable to do together. Such heartwarming and happy scenes in the drawings are inscribed in my memory.

My mom puts her cute grandchildren into the works imagining that they would have done like this.

My daughters in her drawings look just alike, where their gestures are very real in minute detail such as turning around, sitting, leaning their heads, and raising their hands. I always think that only my mom can draw such pictures.

In this picuture, my second daughter is eating water melon delightedly with her sister. And besides, there is a picture showing their decorating bamboo leaves on the Star Festival, "Tanabata," and so on. Too many drawings!

I always picuture my daughter; What is she doing now? Doesn't she feel lonely? Isn't she crying? Does she feel bad?

It makes me relieved looking at her joyful and happy face in the drawings. Her smile really makes me feel that my loved one still lives happily with us.

I watched with interest on the New Year's day a series of TV (Japanese national broadcasting association) programs "Proposals for the future." Dr. Lisa Randall, a leading theoretical physicist, mentioned the extra dimention or the fifth dimention. Mr. Michael Crichton is skeptical about carbon dioxide emission as a reason of global warming. Other stories include "nanorobot," which injected via vein could reach the focus and cure the disease, and genocides or ethnic conflict still existing.

Among them, I was really impressed by Mr. Crichton's comment "We can't tell what it will be like at 100 years from now." In fact, no one would have imagined today's world 100 years ago. Cars, airplanes, nuclear powers, and computers have been developed over the past 100 years. Human beings have traveled to even outer space and the moon.

And information revolution including maturing of the Internet. Information technology (IT) has developed tremendously, and will continue to forever and ever. Do you know the term "Moore's law"? Accordig to the law, the performance of semiconductor (computer) doubles every 18 months, meaning 10 to the 20th power (1E+20)-fold improvement over 100 years, unbelievable.

We can't see the earth, the world and Japan at 100 years from now. How far will the IT have developed? Will the human being have discovered an astonishing technology? Will the world have turned into one without wars, conflicts, or nuclear weapons? Will the human beings be using efficiently limited natural resources or have invented new resources? Imagining that distant future makes me excited but a bit scared.

I believe that the truth, even at 100 years from now, is that human beings procreate, nurture and leave offsprings. And parents' love for their children will not forever change at all.

I introduce a Japanese poem written nearly 1,300 years ago by Yamanoueno-Okura, a famous Japanese poet.

All shining silverGold or jewels in the worldMean nothing at allCompared to one's own childThe most precious of all treasures